Archive | July 23rd, 2018

NOVANEWS

Th Great March of Return – which began on March 30 and has not yet ended – has shuffled the cards and brought crucial questions to the fore regarding the essence of the Palestinian cause as well as the status of the Gaza Strip. Despite the bleak reality of life in Gaza, which Israel’s siege will, with international and local collusion, soon render uninhabitable, a new awareness is emerging.

This new awareness is undercutting the long-dominant policies of the current right-wing leadership and the superficial “opposition” represented by what I call the Stalinist left – that is, both the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestinian People’s Party, the Palestinian Democratic Union and, to some extent, the Palestinian National Initiative. These parties have so far failed to emerge from their intellectual subordination to the now defunct Soviet Union and continue to depend financially on the right-wing leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). In other words, they rely on the Palestinian Authority for their existence and are unable to forge independent and effective strategies.

Given the failure of the dominant political class after 70 years of displacement and dispossession since the Nakba, 11 years of blockade that international human rights organizations have described as a crime against humanity, and three Israeli wars that have killed more than 4,000 men, women, and children, the Palestinians of Gaza have decided to peacefully mobilize to enforce international resolutions, beginning with UN Resolution 194 regarding the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and lands.

Indeed, as Gaza-based civil society and political activists have concluded, the only dependable power is that of the people, especially after the Palestinian leadership turned its back on the Gaza Strip and began to impose punitive measures against it in April 2017. The struggle against apartheid in South Africa has inspired Palestinian activists since the late 1980s and the popular mobilization of the First Intifada. Palestinian activists also draw on a history of popular resistance in Palestine, including the 1936 strike and later uprisings in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Israel.

Activists have concluded the only dependable power is that of the peopleCLICK TO TWEETThe new awareness emerging in and from Gaza connects all forms of popular resistance. In particular, it upholds the call to boycott, divest from, and impose sanctions on Israel (BDS), inspired by the South African liberation movement. Indeed, the March of Return has created an unprecedented Palestinian consensus and is in line with the goals of the BDS movement. BDS activists have participated in the march from the very beginning, holding awareness-raising events in partnership with organizers of the march, in which they have shown the direct relationship between the main forms of popular resistance and the role of civil society in taking the lead in these forms, given the lessons of past experience and approaches such as armed resistance.

The Gaza March of Return campaign has the potential to promote true national unity after all the attempts to reconcile Fatah and Hamas since 2006 have failed. All the political parties are participating in the march and have representatives on the High National Committee alongside civil society representatives. The fact that both Hamas and Fatah have representatives on this committee demonstrates that only political activists that are directly connected to the people can achieve what party leaders have failed to accomplish. And party leaders have failed because the present Palestinian political system represents class and group interests that depend on internal divisions to survive, as well as on security coordination with Israel’s occupation. The march has proven that a wide gap separates the Palestinian leadership from the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza.

The new awareness created by the Great March of Return is also apparent in the complete break with the Oslo process and its vision of a mini-state alongside a Jewish state that practices racism against its own people. It has the potential to revive the concepts of national liberation and self-determination by addressing the new facts on the ground that Israel created. These realities have rendered it impossible to establish an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on 22% of the land of historic Palestine. Therefore, the time has come for a decisive struggle for freedom, equality, and justice. After all, two-thirds of Gaza residents are refugees whose rights to both return and reparations are guaranteed by international law.

The BDS movement has not embraced a clear political stance on the question of statehood or whether there should be two states or a single democratic state. However, the March of Return’s goals fly in the face of the two-state solution since it is essentially in contradiction with the main demand of marchers, that is, the return and reparation of refugees. The holding of sister marches in Haifa, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Umm Al-Fahm highlights the pan-Palestinian nature of the March of Return and its spread from the besieged Gaza Strip to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and Israel. And this is exactly what worries Israel.

This popular initiative is an attempt to redirect efforts toward achieving legitimate rights and to interconnect the three segments of the Palestinian people – the Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in the OPT and the diaspora. It also proves that Gaza constitutes an integral part of Palestinian national identity. Palestinians in Gaza have never been unpatriotic and cannot be held responsible for the deep national rift. They have played a vital role in shaping and vigorously defending modern Palestinian nationalism, which is precisely what the march has affirmed.

The March of Return’s goals fly in the face of the two-state solutionCLICK TO TWEETThe Palestinian leadership has now submitted a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) claiming that Israeli officials committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people. Palestinian leaders must go further: They must renounce the constraints of Oslo, including security coordination and economic subordination, and unequivocally embrace the BDS movement’s call. They should not enter any “negotiations” unless the implementation of Resolution 194 tops the agenda. They must ensure that any negotiations tackle the demand to end the apartheid policies against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Finally, the struggle for freedom, return, and self-determination for all segments of the Palestinian people is the concrete embodiment of inclusive national unity on the ground. This unity is not defined by two political factions, or by the so-called “two parts of the homeland” (that is, the West Bank and Gaza), but rather by the new collective awareness to which the March of Return and the BDS movement have contributed.

Yemen is close to famine after a 25-percent increase in levels of severe hunger this year and an offensive on the main port city of Hodeida, a lifeline for millions, humanitarian organisations warned on Monday.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation reports, thousands more people have been displaced by the conflict and many are having to skip meals and beg on the streets, they said, with an estimated 8.4 million people already on the verge of starvation.

“We perceive the country to be sitting on a knife edge in terms of famine – it could tip at any time really,” Suze van Meegen, spokeswoman for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from the capital, Sanaa.

“The desperation we are seeing is becoming greater – more people are begging in the streets.”

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said four in every 10 children under five were now acutely malnourished, and put the number of people displaced since the Hodeida offensive began at 200,000.

“Averting famine in Yemen will be contingent on the ability of WFP and other humanity agencies to reach the populations in need to sustain humanitarian assistance,” said Stephen Anderson, Yemen country director for the WFP, by phone from Sanaa.

The United Nations said last year there were “famine-like” conditions in parts of Yemen, but that not all the criteria had been met.

For famine to be declared, more than 20 percent of the population must be unable to feed themselves, with 30 percent or more of children under five suffering acute malnutrition and doubling in the rate of mortality, the UN said at the time.

The offensive on Hodeidah was led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and launched the largest battle in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people.

The war has caused the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis, with 22 million Yemenis dependent on aid.

Van Meegen said it was calm in Hodeidah city, but heavy fighting south of the city was causing civilian deaths and driving people from their homes.

The Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthi movement had previously closed the port, the country’s main entry point for food, fuel and humanitarian supplies.

In June, WFP was able to bring in three ships containing enough food for six million people for one month.

Anderson said the prospect of the ports closing again was a “major concern.”

Posted in Saudi Arabia, YemenComments Off on Yemen Close to Famine After Port Offensive, Aid Groups Warn

NOVANEWS

Like any other self-respecting government, the Iranians are choosing defiance.

Iran fans wear masks representing U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as they await the start of a group B match between Iran and Spain at the 2018 soccer World Cup in the Kazan Arena in Kazan, Russia, June 20, 2018. Eugene Hoshiko | AP

Trump’s constant hostility to Iran has made it politically impossible for anyone in the Iranian government to consider negotiating with the U.S.:

But even reformers accept that national pride dictates that Mr Trump tirades against Iran makes it ever more difficult for the government to even consider talks with the US.

It is poisonous to negotiate with Trump under the circumstances,” said Hossein Marashi, a senior reformist politician. “When we face unfair attacks, we have no choice but to answer those attacks. This US approach is not sustainable and we should wait until there is a change in the next Congress or administration.”

Trump and Pompeo may say that they want Iran to agree to a “better” deal, but everything else that they say and do shows that they have no interest in any agreement that might be acceptable to Iran. The administration’s demands have put Iran in the position of choosing between defiance and humiliating surrender with nothing in between, and like any other self-respecting government the Iranians are choosing defiance. The U.S. under Trump has already proven that it can’t be trusted to honor its agreements with Iran when the president reneged on the nuclear deal. The goal of the administration’s Iran policy is now unmistakable: the destabilization and overthrow of the regime. It is clear that the administration has no interest in defusing tensions through diplomacy, and it is instead looking to pick a fight with Iran over anything and everything.

The Trump administration’s intense hostility towards Iran and its willingness to engage with a nuclear-armed North Korea sends a clear message to North Korea and the rest of the world. The administration is showing that the U.S. will treat nuclear-armed states with some measure of respect while treating states that abide by their nonproliferation obligations like trash. Iran is still complying with the terms of the nuclear deal, but the Trump administration has given them every incentive to scrap it and follow North Korea’s example.

Posted in USA, IranComments Off on Trump Administration Gives Iran a Choice: Defiance or Humiliating Surrender

NOVANEWS

During the past three days, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies entered up to 40 villages and settlements in the southern provinces of Quneitra and Daraa after militants, mostly members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) had surrendered in the area.

A few batches of radical militants and their families, consisting of dozens of buses, already left southern Syria towards the militant-held part of Idlib province. Militants also handed over more than 10 battle tanks to the SAA. On July 23, militants continued surrendering weapons to government forces and leaving towards Idlib.

Israel transported several hundred of the White Helmets and their families from the southwestern part of Syria to Jordan overnight July 21, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reported saying this move was “a humanitarian effort” at the request of the US and European countries.

According to Jordan’s official Petra state media outlet, the number of evacuated persons included 800 White Helmets members and their families.

The IDF claimed Israel engaged in the “out of the ordinary” move due to the “immediate risk” to the lives of the civilians from the ongoing military operation in the area.

The White Helmets is an infamous Western-backed organization, which according to Syrian, Russian and Iranian governments as well as to independent researchers, has been involved in staging chemical attacks and other propaganda operations in order to assist the US-led block in its attempts to overthrow the Assad government. The organization operates only within the militant-held area, in a close cooperation with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

One of the most prominent cases of the White Helmets operations is the Douma chemical incident on April 7, 2018, which was used by the US, France and the UK to justify a massive missile strike on Syria on April 14.

According to Syrian experts, the key goal of the evacuation of the White Helmets members is to not allow forces of the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance to question members of the organization over its activities coordinated with Western intelligences.

The repeatedly declared Israeli “noninvolvement” in the conflict continued on July 22 when four senior FSA commanders in southern Syria run away to Israel. Syrian opposition activists identified them as “Moaz Nassar,” the leader of the Golan Knights Brigade, “Ahmed al-Nahs,” a commander in the Saif al-Sham Brigades, “Alaa al-Halaki,” the leader of the al-Ababil Army and “Abu Rateb Nassar,” a commander in the Golan Knights Brigade.

Over the past few years, these armed groups have been repeatedly accused by the Damascus government of cooperating with the Israeli military and intelligence. Their evacuation is another sign that Israel and its allies are attempting to hide some of their operations in the war-torn country.

Russian forces intercepted at least two armed UAVs over the Khmeimim Air Base on July 20 and 21. Drones were launched by militants from the so-called de-escalation zone area, which includes Idlib and northern Latakia.

The continued attacks by militants on the Russian facilities in Syria are only nearing the Russian-backed SAA advance to put an end to this attacks and the presence of terrorists excluded from the ceasefire, like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, in the area.

GOLAN HEIGHTS — Israel’s military has reported that it used two U.S.-made Patriot missiles to shoot down a Syrian Sukhoi fighter jet on Tuesday, with reports indicating that the pilot — identified as Colonel Umran Mare — died soon after his plane crashed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Twitter account claimed that the Syrian jet had “penetrated” Israeli airspace in the occupied Golan Heights by around 1 mile before the decision was given to shoot it down. The incident marks the first time since 2014 that Israel has shot down a Syrian fighter jet in proximity to the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which is internationally recognized as Syrian territory captured by Israel.

However, the Syrian government has strongly contested that assessment, stating that the jet had in fact been attacking jihadist groups along the border on the edge of the Yarmouk Valley and had never left Syrian airspace when it was shot down. Syrian state news agency SANA asserted that Israel’s attack on the jet “confirms its support for the armed terrorist groups” currently being targeted by the Syrian military as part of its successful offensive to retake southern Syria from rebel groups.

Two Patriot missiles were launched at a Syrian Sukhoi fighter jet that infiltrated about 1 mile into Israeli airspace. The IDF monitored the fighter jet, which was then intercepted by the Patriot missiles. pic.twitter.com/owL4Pm7zER

IDF

✔@IDFSpokesperson

Since this morning, there has been an increase in the internal fighting in Syria and the Syrian Air Force’s activity. The IDF is in high alert and will continue to operate against the violation of the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement.

A report on Israeli Army Radio, cited by RT, seemed to confirm the Syrian government account, as it stated that the jet likely crashed on the Syrian-side of the border.

Chronic Israeli involvement around the Golan border

If Israel did shoot the plane down in Syrian airspace, it certainly would not be the first time Israel has intervened in the region in order to protect extremist Islamist rebel groups that have controlled the Syrian side of the border for the past several years. Indeed, Israel is largely responsible for the continued existence of these groups, having cultivated their presence in the area, as a so-called “buffer zone” against Syrian-allied Iranian and Lebanese forces, under the orders of former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

Furthermore, Israel has been shown to have supplied these groups with food and weapons and has bused injured rebels into Israel for medical treatment before sending them back to the Syrian border. In some cases, Israel even financed the groups entirely — as is the case with the rebel group Fursan al-Golan (Knights of the Golan), which has received approximately $60,000 per year from the Israeli government since 2013.

Given the Syrian military’s recent successes in reclaiming rebel-held parts of Southern Syria, and especially its recent advances in strategic areas near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Israel is likely eager to slow this “quick advance” wherever it can in order to prevent the collapse of the buffer zone in which it has heavily invested for over the past five years. Israel is also likely eager to halt this advance in light of past statements made by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — who, prior to the war, had promised to retake the occupied Golan Heights from Israel and return it to Syria.

Ultimately, any effort made by Israel to halt the Syrian advance may have come too late, as reports have surfaced that rebels in the area have already announced their intention to surrender to Syrian forces. However, under the pretext of an alleged Iranian and Lebanese military presence along its border, Israel may yet intervene to remake its so-called “buffer zone” by force.

NOVANEWS

Forty Jewish organisations from around the world have issued a joint statement dispelling the notion that calling Israel a racist country is anti-Semitic. The group denounced sections of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism saying that it stifles criticism of Israel with false accusations of racism against Jews.

The statement by the international coalition, which also includes dozens of non-Jewish groups from 15 different countries, coincides with a row within the British Labour Party over some of the examples of anti-Semitism contained in the IHRA guideline. While the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party has adopted the universal definition of anti-Semitism, it left out or re-worded sections which equated anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel.

Warning against the suppression of free speech while authoritarianism and racism is on the rise across the globe, the international coalition cautions against the adoption of a definition of anti-Semitism that shields Israel from criticism and stifles discussion over its policies.

In their statement, they say that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which is increasingly being adopted or considered by Western governments, “intentionally equate legitimate criticisms of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism”.

They argue that the conflation of anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel “undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against anti-Semitism”. Furthermore “it also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law”.

The coalition, which includes groups like Independent Jewish Voices, Jewish anti-fascist groups, and many others “urge [our] governments, municipalities, universities and other institutions to reject the IHRA definition and instead take effective measures to defeat white supremacist nationalist hate and violence and to end complicity in Israel’s human rights violations”. They denounce Israel saying:

Israel does not represent [us] and cannot speak for us when committing crimes against Palestinians and denying their UN-stipulated rights.”

Attacks against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign were cited as an example of the way in which the IHRA definition is used to suppress free speech and pro-Palestinian activism. It’s reported that since being adopted by the UK government in December 2016, these guidelines have been used to target organisations campaigning for Palestinian rights. Supporters of Israel have also called on the government to stop the annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” on university campuses on the grounds that it breaches the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

After revealing that some of the undersigned organisations said that they gave their full backing to the BDS, while others in part, and others have no formal position on BDS, they all affirmed that “the current call for BDS as a set of tools and tactics should not be defined as anti-Semitic”.

The close alliance between US President Donald Trump and Israel’s right -wing government with white supremacists was a grave threat they said.

The coalition advised that “at times like this, it is more important than ever to distinguish between the hostility to or prejudice against Jews on the one hand and legitimate critiques of Israeli policies and system of injustice on the other.”

Posted in ZIO-NAZIComments Off on Calling ‘Israel’ Racist Is Not Anti-Semitic, Insists International Jewish Coalition

Long satisfied to attempt to dominate pan-Arab media and battle it out with Qatar’s state-owned Al Jazeera television network, Saudi Arabia has now set its hegemonic sights on influencing the media landscape of the non-Arabic speaking greater Middle East.

The announcement provided no details of the business model or whether and, if so, how the SRMG-owned, independent-branded websites would become commercially viable. That may not be an issue from the Independent’s perspective, given that the deal amounts to the British publication licensing its brand and content to a Saudi partner.

The bulk of the content of the new websites is slated to be produced by SRMG journalists in London, Islamabad, Istanbul and New York, with the Independent contributing only translated articles from its English-language website.

The sites, operated out of Riyadh and Dubai, would produce “highest-quality, free-thinking, independent news, insight and analysis on global affairs and local events,” the Independent said.

SRMG publishes the English-language Arab News and Arabic-language Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, newspapers operating within the constraints of tight Saudi censorship that do not challenge Saudi policies.

SRMG was chaired until he recently was appointed minister of culture by Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al Saud. An unknown member of the Saudi ruling family, Prince Bader made headlines last year when he paid a record $450m for a Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ, allegedly as a proxy bidder for Prince Mohammed.

Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel, a Saudi banker with no track record in media acquisitions, last year bought a 30 percent stake in the Independent. An executive of NCB Capital, a subsidiary of government-controlled National Commercial Bank, Mr. Abuljadayel said at the time he was investing on his personal account.

Saudi Arabia’s near monopoly on staid pan-Arabic media was broken in 1996 with the launch of Al Jazeera and its free-wheeling, hard hitting reporting and talk shows. Al Jazeera’s disruption of conservative, Arab state broadcasting prompted Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim, a brother in law of the late King Fahd, to launch Al Arabiya as an anti-dote.

The rise of Al Jazeera cemented a realization in the kingdom that it needed to expand from print media into broadcasting. The need for broadcasting was initially driven home six years earlier when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Saudi authorities banned Saudi media from reporting the invasion only to discover on the third day that Saudis were getting their news from foreign media outlets, among which CNN.

The Saudi-Qatari battle for control of the airwaves escalated in the run-up to this year’s World Cup in Russia. With Al Jazeera and beIN, the network’s sports franchise, blocked in the kingdom as part of the 13-month-old Saudi-UAE-led economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar, Saudi Arabia initially turning a blind eye to beOutQ, a bootlegging operation operating out of the kingdom that used a satellite that is co-owned by the Saudi government.

The choice of languages for the Independent websites suggests that SRMG sees the deal as strengthening its brand while supporting the kingdom in its battles with Qatar and Iran and quest for regional hegemony.

The launch of a Farsi website targets the kingdom’s arch rival Iran. Leaving politics aside, Iranians, confronted with an economic crisis that is being exasperated by harsh US sanctions, are unlikely to subscribe or advertise on the website. The same is true for Saudi businesses in the absence of diplomatic relations and given Saudi backing for the sanctions.

The Independent’s Turkish website will have to compete in a heavily populated media landscape that has largely been muzzled by President Recep Tayeb Erdogan. The website’s significance lies in the fact that Turkey supports Qatar in the spat that pits the Gulf state against Saudi Arabia and its allies, maintains close ties to Iran, and challenges Saudi regional ambitions in Palestine as well as the Horn of Africa.

In many ways, Urdu-speaking Pakistan, one of the world’s most populous Muslim nations that borders on Iran, has long supported the kingdom militarily, and is home to the world’s largest Shia Muslim majority, could prove to be the most lucrative element of SRMG’s tie up with the Independent.

In contrast to Turkey, Saudi Arabia enjoys empathy in major segments of Pakistan’s population, hosts a sizeable Pakistani community, has strong support among the country’s religious scholars as well as ties to influential militants whom the military is seeking to ease into mainstream politics, and funds religious media outlets.

At the bottom line, the SRMG-Independent tie-up may be for the kingdom less about business and more about soft power.

NOVANEWS

Demonstrators push police’s shields as they protest Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro near the attorney generals office in Caracas, Venezuela, July 18, 2018. The previous night, former presidential candidate and opposition leader Henrique Capriles called on the country’s political forces to reorganize in order to cope with the South American country’s hyperinflation, and lack of food and medicine. Fernando Llano | A

The aggravation of the economic crisis is making life unbearable for working people in Venezuela. The destruction of the purchasing power of wages has been combined with the collapse of all basic infrastructure (water, electricity and public transport). Workers in different sectors have started to organize and protest, demanding higher wages; while peasants in the countryside are fighting attempts to destroy Chavez’s agrarian revolution.

I have visited Venezuela every year for over 15 years now, and in my most recent visit this June I was struck by the severe and sharp deterioration in living conditions.

The economic crisis in Venezuela has entered its fourth year, and rather than abetting, it is worsening. Hyperinflation has destroyed the purchasing power of wages – to the point that the current level of the minimum wage, after it was last increased by the government in June to 5 million Bolivars a month – barely buys a kilo of meat or a full chicken, or a little more than a carton of 30 eggs.

The scarcity of banknotes forces many workers to spend long hours queuing at bank branch offices and cashpoints to withdraw the necessary amount of money to pay for transport. The owners of buses operating on the regular lines are demanding steep fare increases to cover for the exorbitant prices of spare parts, tyres, motor oil and so on. The government has allowed some increases, but these are considered insufficient by the bus owners, who have resorted to refusing to operate or doing so only as “pirates”: stopping outside the regulated stops and charging customers much higher prices. Owners of trucks have now started to replace buses as a means of public transport. These open trucks are unsafe for the transportation of passengers and they have already caused several accidents.

Infrastructure collapse

People have to queue for long hours before they can get onto any form of transport. In the barrios (shantytowns) on the hills of Caracas, transport has almost disappeared and people have to walk up and down the steep slopes that separate their homes from the Metro stations. The Metro is just about the only form of transportation that works, and as of August last year has become free, as the tickets cost more to print than the fare they represent, as well as the fact that there were no longer coins nor notes of low enough denominations to pay for the fares (which had not increased with inflation).

However, the Metro is now supposed to cope with transporting many more passengers who can no longer use the buses either, because they cannot get access to cash or because the buses are not running. The Metro system has also been affected by lack of maintenance, mismanagement, lack of spare parts, worker absenteeism, etc. Trains are much less frequent and stop for long periods at each station, and as a result are unbearably crowded.

Large parts of the country, including the capital Caracas, now suffer from regular water cut-offs, with some areas only getting running water once or twice a week, and in some cases every 10 days. Electricity blackouts are also frequent, and in places like Maracaibo have led to street protests as people cannot bear the heat and the ruining of food in their freezers and fridges. The main reasons for this collapse in infrastructure are corruption, mismanagement and a lack of maintenance, resources and workers.

Hyperinflation is also slowly bringing the whole economy to a halt. Many workers are still employed in factories where nothing is produced. They sometimes go to work, just to keep that income, but only for a few hours, then spend the rest of day chasing after cash, food or perhaps doing a few deals in the informal sector in order to complement their wages, which no longer allow them to feed their families.

A comrade who works in a printing company told me they have not had any orders for six months. The car assembly plants in Carabobo have not assembled a single unit since December 2016. Companies have offered workers redundancy packages (“cajita feliz”) and many, in despair, have taken them, even though the amount they receive in Bolivars loses its value in just a few months.

In these conditions, many have been forced to emigrate. Though the figures are disputed, we are talking about millions (perhaps 2 to 4 million) who have left Venezuela in the last few years. A phenomenon that originally mainly affected the middle classes and professional layers is now spreading to working-class families, who sell all of their goods to send one or more members of the family unit abroad to earn a living and send back a few dollars in remittances. While the middle classes are leaving by plane and going to Europe, the US or Argentina, the working class leaves by coach via Colombia to Perú, Bolivia or Chile. There they face conditions of horrible exploitation but at least are able to send perhaps 50 dollars a month back home, which provides a welcome relief at a time when the minimum wage equals approximately US$1.50 on the black market.

The amount of workers emigrating is having an impact on many public institutions, including Corpoelec (electricity), CANTV (telecoms), MovilNet (mobile phones and internet), etc, adding to the collapse in infrastructure. Even at the Heroinas de Aragua textile factory, occupied and running under workers’ control, three workers had left the country out of a workforce of fewer than 50.

The economic crisis is also destroying one of the conquests of the revolution: free university education. Teachers and students alike are abandoning the universities in large numbers, as the purchasing power of wages has been destroyed and students are forced to earn a living to help their families or a pushed to emigrate. At the Colegio Universitario de Caracas, comrades told me that in some degrees up to 80 percent of students have abandoned their courses before the end of the school year. This is despite the fact that the university provides students with three, free meals a day. Still, for many students who come from working-class families in Los Valles del Tuy, it is not worth continuing their studies as they cannot even get the necessary cash to pay for transportation. A comrade at the UCV told me that 1,500 students have abandoned their courses this semester in his faculty alone. The situation is similar in Bolivarian institutions like the UBV, UNEFA and others.

Remittances from Venezuelan migrants working in other countries provide one of the escape valves, which have so far prevented a social explosion. It is calculated that remittances amounted to a total of US$2bn last year and will rise to US$6bn this year.

The other escape valve is provided by the CLAP: subsidised food parcels sold by the government. These are provided once a month or, in some areas, once every 20 or 15 days, and contain a number of basic foodstuffs (rice, pasta, maize flour, oil and so on). Products in the CLAP boxes are mainly imported (from Mexico, Colombia, Turkey, etc.), adding to the depletion of government foreign reserves. The government has also implemented a policy of bonuses, which are paid to millions of families on a regular basis to supplement unlivable wages. These are also paid for by printing money.

It should also be noted that, through Misión Vivienda, the Bolivarian Revolution has provided 3 million homes to working-class people who in the main pay no rent. The percentage of wages spent on food has gone up to almost 100 percent: people are almost giving up altogether on small luxuries like buying new clothes, shoes or going out for a drink. Furthermore, when workers receive their wages, they have to immediately spend the whole amount, usually buying food items, as the money will lose its value in a matter of days or weeks.

On top of all these difficulties, the medicine and health care system are also severely affected by the crisis. Drugs are very difficult to find and when they are available they are very expensive. If you have the misfortune of ending up in hospital, you have to provide your own medication and in many cases also pay for materials and utensils. The crisis is not only affecting hospitals but also the Misión Barrio Adentro Clinics, one of the conquests of the revolution.

Class struggle in the countryside

In the countryside, there is a coordinated offensive to dismantle the gains of the agrarian reform that was carried out under Chavez with the expropriation of big landed estates, which were given to peasant communes. Private capitalist landowners buy off local judges, officials at the Land Reform Institute (INTI) and National Guard officers to violently dispossess peasant collectives from land they had been legally granted by the INTI itself. In some cases, peasants have been arrested by the National Guard, in others threatened or killed by the hired goons of the landowners (sicarios), which in some cases are connected to the state bureaucracy and in others to the reactionary opposition.

The worst cases of this counter-offensive, which revolutionary peasant activists describe as a “restoration of the latifundio”, are taking place in the region south of the Maracaibo lake, but examples can also be found in Barinas, Apure, Yaracuy, Portuguesa, etc. Despite solemn promises by president Maduro during the election campaign that these attacks on recovered peasant land were going to cease, they have continued.

The low-intensity war against the El Maizal Commune is part of this counter-offensive. Recently, the bureaucracy at the state-owned Agropatria (run by military officers) denied them the necessary seeds and fertiliser for their sowing campaign. When they tried to acquire them on the black market (which is supplied directly from within Agropatria itself), they were briefly arrested on charges of illegal purchases! The peasant movement replied by taking over the Agropatria premises, demanding solutions.

Another example of how bureaucracy, corruption and mismanagement threaten the gains of the revolution is the case of the nationalised Porcinos del Alba pig farm in Lara. The farm was abandoned by its state-appointed manager and the pigs were dying away. Recently, Communards of El Maizal decided to take it over and run it themselves.

Backlash

This whole situation has become unbearable. The government promised measures to deal with the economic war prior to the Constituent Assembly elections a year ago, but nothing was done. Maduro promised to restore “economic prosperity” if he won the presidential election on 20 May, but again nothing really has happened and the conditions for working people have continued to deteriorate.

Recently the government floated the idea of negotiating the prices of 50 basic food products with the capitalists. An announcement was promised but it never came. It is clear that producers will not agree to any form of price controls in a situation of acute hyperinflation. It makes absolutely no business sense to them.

In the last two weeks, a growing number of Chavista left intellectuals have published very critical articles, berating government inaction on the economic field and warning of the growing anger accumulating amongst the Bolivarian masses.

Demonstrators hold signs that reads in Spanish “Our fight is for those of us who stayed and those who left,” left, and “I want a country where we don’t eat from the garbage” as they shout slogans against Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in downtown Caracas, Venezuela, July 18, 2018 Fernando Llano | AP

Workers and peasants are growing increasingly restless and are starting to take to the streets. The Platform of Peasant Struggle has organized a march by foot to the capital under the name of “the admirable peasant march” in defense of the “agrarian legacy of Chavez” and against “sicariato” (targeted killing of peasant activists).

Nurses at hospitals across the country have been protesting for weeks, some of them on strike, others holding pickets outside hospitals. Their demands can be summed up in the following: “we want a decent wage, we don’t want to emigrate”. When the government offered them more regular delivery of CLAP boxes and asked them to make sacrifices, they replied that they didn’t want charity but wages they can live on and that they would make sacrifices if they could see high-ranking state officials and ministers suffering the same conditions as ordinary working people in terms of wages, transportation, etc.

There is a threat that, if the nurses’ demands are not satisfied, there will be a mass resignation of healthcare workers, which would complete the collapse of the system.

Workers at CANT, Movilnet, cement companies, the Caracas Metro and the electricity company have all held protests and demonstrations; and threatened strike action. The situation is coming to a boiling point. This week there were protests of CANT workers that went beyond what the trade union leaders had called for. While they wanted a controlled protest to deliver a letter to management, workers occupied the company headquarters and blocked the road outside.

Now the Corpoelec workers federation, Fetraelec has called for a national, all-out strike, starting on 23 July. The mood is such that workers at CANT, Movilnet and others might join in. The beginning of a genuine movement on the part of workers is to be welcomed and is an encouraging sign. From a situation of despair, hopelessness and abandonment, we are moving to one where workers are moving to collective action in an attempt to solve their problems.

Economic policy

The question arises, however: from where will the money come to meet the necessary and just wage demands of the workers? This is the crucial issue. There is a sharp debate amongst different trends in the Bolivarian movement about the reasons for the crisis and what economic policies should be used to combat it. Some, like former minister Jesús Farías, argue for a complete abandonment of foreign exchange controls, which he argues have not worked. Others, like former minister Luís Salas and economist Pascualina Curzio, say that the devaluation of the currency is mainly “induced” by a concerted attack on the Bolivar, carried out through websites which act as indicators for the black market exchange rate (like Dollar Today and others).

This is wrong as it confuses the symptom for the cause. The existence of a black market for dollars is not the result of the existence of a website that says dollars are worth 3.5 million Bolivars. On the contrary, it is the scarcity of dollars in relation to the demand that drives its price up. Capitalists engage in a flight of capital because they have no confidence that investing their money in Bolivars in the local economy will guarantee them what they consider to be a reasonable rate of profit. At bottom, the main reason for this is the fact that, in Venezuela, a revolution took place that has encouraged workers to, amongst other things, take over factories. There was also government expropriation in the past. No sane capitalist would invest under these circumstances.

Added to this is the fact that the government, by implementing foreign exchange controls, has been allocating a limited amount of dollars at subsidized prices for importation. The Venezuelan economy, heavily distorted by oil production, is largely reliant on imports. The mechanism of subsidized dollars for importation, however, became a conduit for a massive transfer of the oil revenue to the private sector. Companies that need to import (and others which do not), apply for preferential dollars, which they then exchange on the black market, making a massive profit without the need to produce or import anything. Hundreds of billions of dollars from the oil rent have been handed over to the capitalists in this way.

The Venezuelan economic crisis was triggered by the collapse of the price of oil after 2013, but what the crisis revealed starkly is the impossibility of regulating capitalism. If you attempt to do so, by imposing price controls, foreign exchange controls, tight labor protection laws and so on you will end up with a flight of capital and a capital investment strike.

Of course, the Venezuelan economic crisis is exacerbated by corruption, mismanagement, imperialist sanctions and deliberate economic sabotage. But these are aggravating factors, not the root cause of the crisis.

Farías and others partially identify the problem of controls. Their solution is to lift them all and therefore to allow the ‘normal’ functioning of capitalism. That is one possible way out of the crisis, one in which the workers would be made to pay. If you remove all controls from the economy and allow capitalism to come out of the crisis using its own methods, we know full well how this will be done. There will be mass layoffs of workers, closing down of factories, destruction of the productive forces, the privatization of state-owned companies and so on.

However, the solutions proposed by the group of economists around Luís Salas and Pascualina Curzio are no solution either. They basically propose renewed controls, that is, the policy that has already failed. Curzio proposes to deal with the devaluation of the currency (which she ascribes to the pernicious role of a website) by creating a new currency backed by gold reserves in the central bank. That would certainly solve one problem. The Bolivar-Oro would be a sound currency, which would offer capitalists security. In fact, since gold can be measured by its price in dollars in the world market, what Curzio is proposing is the pegging of the currency to the dollar at a given exchange rate. The problem with this proposal, which Curzio does not seem to realize, is that the government would not be able to print money to pay for the fiscal deficit, which currently amounts to about 20 percent of GDP. That would mean a massive cut in public spending, something Curzio certainly does not advocate but which would be the necessary consequence of the policy she advocates. If, on the other hand, the government were to print money on the basis of the same amount of gold that would inevitably lead to inflation again and we would be back in the position we are now.

The government seems to be following a policy midway between that of those who advocate the continuation of controls and those who favor lifting them. For instance, the government is de facto allowing the controlled devaluation of the currency to bring it closer to the black market rate. Price controls have effectively ceased to exist, as the promised 50 agreed prices have never been released. The government makes appeal after appeal to private capitalists to invest, to which they demand full “liberalization” (of prices, foreign exchange and labor market). Now the government is appealing to Turkish capitalists to invest. Given the extremely low real wages in Venezuela, some of them might be tempted. That is not a real solution, and in any case is not in the interest of Venezuelan workers who are unable to survive at the current level of wages.

The continuation of the present situation in any case already represents a massive adjustment plan, which the workers are paying for through the destruction of the purchasing power of wages.

What is the solution, then? The only way out of the crisis that would benefit the working people of Venezuela would be to expropriate the capitalists, bankers and landowners in order to create a democratically planned economy under workers’ control. Venezuela in the last 15 years has provided many examples of the superiority of workers’ control over both private capitalism and the bureaucratic management in the public sector. However, the state bureaucracy and the government have asphyxiated workers’ control, which is now at its lowest point.

On my last visit, I had the privilege of visiting Alina Foods, in Mérida, a snack-making factory that has been running under workers’ control for over two years. The workers defended the installations when the bosses fled (after having made a lot of money out of speculating with preferential import dollars) and then later on started producing under their own control. They have had to face all sorts of difficulties, including open sabotage on the part of the former “Bolivarian” governor, vice-ministers, army officers in charge of other state-owned companies, etc. They have not only maintained production but have now incorporated a whole new shift of over 30 workers. This is the example to follow.

The Maduro government insists there is an economic war against the Bolivarian Revolution. Why is it then making an appeal to those waging this war to change their ways and invest productively to satisfy the needs of the people? Not only that, but it keeps giving the enemy in this war the preferential dollars with which to wage the war! This makes no sense whatsoever and is a policy that has already been attempted and has led to the current disaster from which working people (not government ministers, army officials or bureaucrats) are suffering.

Imperialist aggression and military coup

Clearly, the economic crisis is the main, immediate threat facing the Bolivarian Revolution, or more correctly, what is left of it, which can be found in the peasant communes, the factories under workers’ control, the communities in the cities organising the supply of food and in the public sector, still at their workplaces despite all difficulties.

However, imperialism has not desisted from its attempts to put an end, once and for all, to this revolutionary experience. It has now been revealed that in August of last year, US President Donald Trump asked his aides to work out a plan to invade Venezuela. He used the examples of Panamá and Grenada as proof that such a plan could work. His aides insisted that this was not a good idea… not because it would be anti-democratic, nor against international law. No! That has never before worried US imperialism! They argued against because they thought it would backfire. And they are right. Any attempt at a military invasion by the US in Venezuela would immediately generate an armed movement of anti-imperialist resistance involving millions and would have a knock-on effect throughout the continent and beyond.

That did not stop Trump from raising the issue at a meeting of four Latin American presidents in September. We can bet those involved were the Colombian, Mexican, Brazilian and Argentinian presidents. They all had the same opinion and were against an invasion. In any case, this means that the issue of a military invasion has been discussed seriously, which in itself is an absolute scandal. Just imagine any other country in the world discussing invading the US because they do not like its president!

In fact, the most astute US imperialists probably are arguing for a tactic that involves increasing sanctions from the US and other countries in Latin America in order to bring about ‘regime change’ in Venezuela by means of economic asphyxiation. It is imperialist aggression all the same, just using different tools.

What is even more worrying than that are the recent revelations about a coup plot from within the Venezuelan army. According to an investigation by Bloomberg, a group of military officers (captains, colonels and generals from the four wings of the army) had planned a military coup to take place a year ago, at the time of the guarimba riots by the opposition. The coup, codenamed Operation Constitution, involved seizing the Miraflores Presidential Palace and Fuerte Tiuna and putting president Maduro on trial. Another simultaneous plot was codenamed Operation Armageddon and involved the assassination of president Maduro during a military parade.

These plans were delayed as the army foiled a separate coup plot. Army officers involved in the coup then decided to delay the implementation of the plot until this year in the run-up to the 20 May presidential election. The report by Bloomberg says that the military officers involved held some of their secret meetings in Colombia. Of course, Colombian and US intelligence agencies were aware of the coup plotters’ plans and while they were not given open support, they were winked off. We can be certain that the report underplays the role played by US and Colombian intelligence. Any right-wing military coup in Venezuela would start by ascertaining the US and Colombians’ disposition!

These reports reveal that malaise within the army goes much deeper than the government lets on. The Maduro government has been careful to maintain the loyalty of the army top brass, by giving them a stake in the economy (through companies like CAMIMPEG and AfgroFANB), and by appointing military officers to run state-owned companies (from PDVSA to Aceites Diana), where they have been notoriously inefficient and corrupt, and more recently by raising the wages of the top officers.

However, if the situation of economic collapse continues and deepens and that is combined with a wave of worker and peasant protests, it is likely that a section of the army might decide to intervene and take power, under the excuse of “dealing with economic chaos with a strong hand”.

A military coup would be a disaster for working people as it would be used, either directly or through a ‘technocratic transition’ to implement the ‘necessary adjustment’ that the ruling class requires in Venezuela.

The situation in Venezuela is therefore critical. At last, workers and peasants have started to move, offering a glimpse of an organized way forward. Only the Venezuelan working people can offer a way forward from the current crisis.

Posted in VenezuelaComments Off on Is Venezuela on the Verge of a Social Explosion?

There’s no doubt about the affection in which Serbia’s Zastava weapons factory is held in the Middle East. Along the wall of Milojko Brzakovic’s managerial boardroom there are tokens of gratitude from the Arab world: plaques from Libya, from the “Public Security Directorate” of Jordan – a smart Hashemite crown above two curved swords – from the Royal Oman Police, even one from “the Palestine Presidential Guard leadership (sic) to Zastava Arms, with great respect and appreciation, 2013”. As for the Syrian war, Brzakovic calls it “a shame to all mankind”.

Nor are the expressions of Arab gratitude mere tokens of esteem. The vast plant behind the boardroom has contracted in its history to produce Kalashnikov rifles, Russian T-72 tanks, the M84 rifle, Hispano-Suiza Spanish anti-aircraft guns and a host of mines and pistols, hand grenades and mountain artillery. In the 19th century – and Brzakovic proudly shows me his state factory’s museum in an old foundry – what was then called the “Technical and Military Works” produced everything from metal church interiors and armored protection for horses to cannons for the Balkan Wars. Indeed you enter this lethal domain in the old Austro-Hungarian city of Kragujevac across the Plaza of the Cannonmakers.

But what interests me are two Zastava instruction manuals I found in the ruined offices of the al-Nusra Front/al-Qaeda groups in newly recaptured eastern Aleppo last year; one for the M02 Coyote machine gun, the other for the 7.62mm M84 machine gun – the first with a blue and white cover, the second coloured green. Not only do they teach users how to strip optical sights and use ‘lock pins’, ‘buffer spikes’ and ‘lugs’, but the 52-page booklet for the M84 includes an analysis of bullet types – “steel core, light… armor piercing incendiary” – tripod assembly mechanisms and lubrication advice.

I push the two manuals across the boardroom table to Brzakovic. He glances at them, nods politely, and pushes them courteously back. He is a tall, moustachioed man, slightly stooped, still a full colonel in the Serbian army – his father was among the first to join Tito’s wartime Partisans in 1941, in the 1st Brigade of Volunteers, which fought right up to the end of the Second World War – and he knows what I am going to ask. How did these documents reach the Islamists in eastern Aleppo? What was for me very tangible proof his ghastly weapons must have found their way to the bloody battle of Aleppo – through legal exports to “friendly” and supposedly law-abiding countries – was for him, I thought, a critical division between public and personal morality.

“What I am sure of,” Brzakovic tells me – and these are words which, in one form or another, I am to hear several times during my travels in Serbia and Bosnia – “is that Zastava Arms and all the [other] producers from the military sector of Serbia do not deliver and export to terrorist organisations or to countries that are under sanctions. And if there are recommendations from the UN or from the EU for some countries where there are conflicts – for example, when the conflict in Ukraine started – no deliveries were sent there.”

Aware the booklets from his factory which I found half buried in the bombed office of a Nusrah/al Qaeda base still lie on the table in front of him, Brzakovic adds “also in Syria, since the conflict started, it [Zastava-produced weapons] is not exported there at all.” But no one has suggested Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus purchased the machine guns whose instruction manuals I found in the former bases of his armed Islamist enemies. What about legal shipments to countries in the Middle East, which might pass on his weapons to al-Nusra, al-Qaeda or Isis?

Brzakovic, a mechanical engineer by trade, looks at me sharply. “We cannot influence nor can we take responsibility if we deliver to the end-user as per contract – as per the EU. We deliver the weapons and we receive confirmation from them [the purchasing countries] that the delivery was received. We cannot take responsibility [for] where their weapons will eventually be used. The responsibility is for the county end-user that [has] taken these weapons. It is their responsibility then.”

He gives an odd example. “How can we control, for example, a delivery to Egypt, as to where these rifles [sic] will eventually be used – we do not have any means to do that. Egypt is only an example. I do not suspect that they do anything. It was just an example.” A very odd example. No one, as far as I know, has ever accused Egypt of sending legally-imported European weapons to Syria.

“Sir,” announces Brzakovic rather pompously, “in the last 15 to 20 years, there is not a single country in the Middle East that did not buy weapons from Zastava – so every country bought them.” It is only now that Brzakovic agrees Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are among his customers. But how does he account for the Zastava machine gun instructions I found in eastern Aleppo? One of them, for the Coyote, states it is “intended for neutralising and destruction of live forces” and details optical sights, rifle barrel grooves and ranges of up to three miles.

“With each of our weapons we deliver also instructions – the manual for maintenance and handling – but Zastava in Serbia certainly did not deliver the weapons and the firearms to Isis. In battles, Isis has maybe taken these weapons during fighting – it’s possible Isis has captured them from ‘coalition’ forces and this is how they ended up in their possession.”

This is a very odd statement. The “coalition” normally refers to Arab armies allied to Nato forces – who certainly don’t fight alongside the Assad government. The Syrian army has Hezbollah, Iranian and other Shia militias fighting on its side but has – as far as we know – no Coyote machine guns in its inventory. But there are photographs of an Islamist fighter in Syria holding a Coyote in February 2016, a year before I discovered the weapon’s manual in Aleppo. And even if Isis or another jihadi group “captured” the weapon in battle, was a fighter likely to have seized the instruction manual – and that of another Zastava machine gun at the same time?

Photos provided by an anonymous FSA fighter show him posing with a Coyote gun manufactured in Serbia, purchased by Bulgarian arms dealer BIEM, sold to Saudi Arabia, and eventually found its way to Syria. Photo | FSA fighter

Walking through his factory museum, crowded with anti-aircraft guns, cannons and Kalashnikovs – Mikhail Kalashnikov, the late, greatest Russian arms artificer of them all, visited the Zastava plant several times – Brzakovic takes an almost maudlin attitude towards war.

“What is happening now in Syria,” he says, “is a big stain and shame to all mankind. It’s a shame for the whole of civilization. I personally believe there are high stakes and interests of the big and powerful [involved].” He launches into a speech about the quality of Zastava weapons, but also their minority status among the big weapons producers. “Middle East countries have weapons from more serious countries [than Serbia]: countries like the US, the Russian Federation, western Europe – from Germany, Poland, Britain, France. Compared to the destructive power of the weapons that the big players in the arms industry are delivering to the Middle East, we are just a slingshot. Aleppo was not destroyed by Coyotes and rifles.”

Every weapon produced at Zastava carries an embossed stamp of the company and a serial number, the armorer of Kragujevac says. When “terrorists in Paris were found to have used Zastava rifles” in 2015, he was able to trace each one to weapons originally sent to Yugoslav arms depots before the Bosnian war, and in at least one case to a US arms importer – his account is correct – and he claims every weapon produced in the state factory is listed in archives for the past 40 years. Do I have any serial numbers from Aleppo, he asks, as if I can lug whole machine guns back from the Syrian front lines to Serbia for his inspection.

But Brzakovic is a proud man and there is a lot of George Bernard Shaw’s Andrew Undershaft about him – his armament technical engineering degree, his military school training at state expense – and he remembers a much-admired ballistics teacher telling his class: “Dear children, what we are teaching you today is that in future, one day, you will design and construct this garbage which will take human lives!”

Brzakovic pauses. “I always had this idea that this weapon is used to protect somebody. Since the beginning of my career, I’ve assumed that I am participating in the production of something that will allow people to protect themselves, not to kill people in aggressive wars. But this world, in the meantime, has gone to complete chaos.”

And he then adopts a familiar refrain. Guns do not kill. People kill. “They once killed with spears and then swords and cut off parts of bodies… and when the first gunpowder appeared, they used it for bombs, and unfortunately today we produce intercontinental rockets, we talk about nuclear war. So do you not agree that people kill and that rifles do not?” I suspect Brzakovic is a little vain about his calling, fascinated by the mechanics of weaponry, and I tell him this.

“My late mother,” he replied, “was sitting with me and her other three kids one day and – ‘Micho’ was my nickname – she said to me: ‘Of all of my children, my Micho is the perfectionist.’ And my credo in life has always been: whatever I am doing, either do it perfectly or [do] not do it at all.”

Alas, I fear ‘Micho’ makes as-near-perfect-as-is-possible weapons.

“I wish you to remain healthy,” he adds with fatherly concern. “If you are healthy in life, all the rest you will manage somehow.” Avoiding Zastava bullets will be one of my aims, I assure Brzakovic. “We do not produce any bullets,” he replies sharply.

I’m not sure I would want to repeat all that to the war-shattered people of Syria, not least to its children, who can scarcely be perfectionists at anything. Talking of which, not far from the factory in Kragujevac, the Nazis rounded up hundreds of Serbs for execution in 1941, in revenge for the assassination of German soldiers. When they couldn’t fulfill their quota of hostages, they broke into a local school and seized the children for execution, to make up the numbers.

In all, they shot 2,381 civilians. A small bloodbath, of course, compared to Syria.

Posted in SyriaComments Off on The Serbian Arms-Maker and the Syrian War

Countries need independence because they want their decision-making process to be immune to outside influence. Ukraine is an exception to the rule. Emphasizing its independence from Russia, it willingly does whatever Washington tells it to, even if that runs counter to its national interests.

In January, Westinghouse Electric Company signed a nuclear-fuel contract extension with Ukraine’s State Enterprise National Nuclear Energy Generation Company (SE NNEGC) Energoatom. The deal “solidifies Westinghouse’s role as a strategic partner for Energoatom and demonstrates our ability to support Ukraine with their energy diversification.” The contract includes nuclear fuel deliveries to seven of Ukraine’s 15 nuclear-power reactors between 2021 and 2025, expanding and extending the existing contract for six reactors that was set to expire in 2020.

On July 19, Westinghouse reported that a full core of VVER-1000 fuel had been loaded into a nuclear reactor unit in Ukraine — the first one to operate with Westinghouse VVER-1000 fuel assemblies as the sole fuel source. According toBusiness Wire, “Westinghouse currently supplies fuel to six of Ukraine’s 15 nuclear power reactors. Beginning in 2021, the number of reactors with Westinghouse fuel will increase to seven.” The goal is to break Ukraine’s dependence on supplies of energy from Russia.

Westinghouse has been operating for 13 years in Ukraine. Its fuel has proven to be incompatible with Soviet VVER reactors. In March, the American company revealed a conceptual VVER fuel design upon the successful completion of an EU-funded project targeted at diversifying the nuclear fuel supply for VVER-440 reactors in Europe. Perhaps Westinghouse has accomplished its mission. If it find success in Ukraine, it could greatly expand its operations in Europe to include Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria, while elbowing its competitor — Russia’s ROSATOM — away from its traditional markets. Ukraine will be the first to use the new Westinghouse fuel — a risky business. But is it worth it?

The next step is to make Ukraine reject the new-generation Russian reactors in favor of the Westinghouse-produced АР1000. Russia has designed a new generation of units. For instance, the VVER-1200 unit has already begun operations at the Novovoronezh NPP, and the first unit of the Leningrad NPP-2 was started up in late 2017. Last year, a large team of international experts were impressed with the Russian reactors’ performance, especially with the high safety standards.

ROSATOM controls 17.7% of the global nuclear-fuel market. It supplies nuclear fuel to 78 (out of 440) reactors used for energy production in 15 (out of 30) countries. Not a single bid to supply nuclear fuel has been lost in 10 years. Every sixth energy-producing reactor in the world runs on fuel fabricated by TVEL. Five EU member states, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, and Slovakia, operate Russian reactors — four VVER-1000 and 14 VVER-440 type units. They currently receive fuel supplies from TVEL.

So why is Ukraine willing to cooperate with the US company, unlike, for instance, Hungary and Bulgaria, which have made the decision not to sign contacts with Westinghouse, citing dubious safety guarantees? What is Kiev getting? The prices charged by ROSATOM and Westinghouse are, by and large, comparable. Perhaps Westinghouse will charge a bit more and not do one thing that’s very important — US companies don’t recycle their spent nuclear fuel. Ukraine will have to grapple with this problem on its own, something it has neither the facilities nor the experience to do.

ROSATOM is the leader in nuclear-fuel recycling, but Kiev had made its choice. So, Ukraine’s only option in this situation was to get a loan from the US to build a spent-fuel storage facility (CSFSF). It was a fresh experience for America’s Holtec International, which used experimental technology instead of the true-and-tried methods normally used by ROSATOM.

The first stage is due to be completed in 2019. The storage facility the Americans are building is near-surface. Spent fuel will placed in special containers on the surface, turning Ukraine into a nuclear waste dump. No other country has done this, for safety reasons. It sounds crazy, but it looks like the Ukrainian public will have to put up with this “independent” decision. Economic expediency has been sacrificed for purely political goals. But this “independence” is not complete, because Westinghouse buys its uranium at home, and it’s a well-known fact that ROSATOM dominates the US uranium market.

Meanwhile, TVEL, ROSATOM’s fuel-supply subsidiary, has begun production of a new fuel type, TVS-KVADRAT (FA-SQUARE), which is designed for PWR (pressurized water reactor) plants of Western design. There are about 200 PWR reactors in the world.

The TVS-Kvadrat fuel is a 17-by-17 lattice PWR fuel assembly that TVEL developed for operation in Westinghouse-designed three- and four-loop PWRs. There are 35 such units in operation in the US. The technology is based on a TVEL fuel design used in Russian VVER units. The first test batch of ROSATOM’s fuel assemblies is to be delivered to the US in 2019.

In 2021, the Russian company will deliver fuel to Sweden’s Vattenfall Nuclear Fuel AB, which operates the Ringhals nuclear power plant. TVS-K fuel is currently being used in a pilot operation there. Sweden has vast experience operating nuclear reactors; it knows what it’s doing. It has made an independent decision too. In contrast to Ukraine, Sweden believes that ROSATOM’s know-how in nuclear-fuel recycling is an important advantage allowing Stockholm to save huge sums of money that would otherwise be spent on deep underground storage. Ukraine has shot itself in the foot by making a politically motivated decision instead of promoting a fair completion by choosing what better suits its needs.

Posted in UkraineComments Off on Ukraine Shifts to Nuclear Cooperation with US-Based Westinghouse